


Drink Me, Sweet Lover

by Earl_Grey_Is_For_The_Weak



Category: Tea Time - Fandom
Genre: ...sort of, I listen to a lot of Halestorm OK, In which Green Tea is a seductive little shit, Obsession, Other, Poor Life Choices, Songfic, drinking while on your period, it's especially bad here, only technically a self-insert fic, which we all knew already BUT, you can't have toxic romances without Halestorm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-03 15:22:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17880290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Earl_Grey_Is_For_The_Weak/pseuds/Earl_Grey_Is_For_The_Weak





	1. One Thing - Ave Marie

You can’t remember how it started.

(This is categorically false. You remember everything.)

(Every touch.)

(Every taste.)

(Every tease.)

You can’t remember how it started, but by God you remember how far it went.

 

…………………

You’re sitting in your desk chair, feet neatly tucked to the side so that they don’t tap incessantly against the floor. You keep your legs still. The tremors wracking up and down your spine are invisible to your co-workers, or at least you hope so, and the sweat making your foundation cake under the fluorescent lights can’t be as noticeable as you’re imagining.

  
A little voice in the back of your head argues otherwise.

  
You ignore it.

  
You are, by all internal measures, absolutely wrecked. And as you watch the wall clock down the hall tick tick tick ever closer to 5 o’clock, your mind can’t help but wander to who put you in this position in the first place.

  
Just thinking of that conniving, determined, unrelenting rat bastard has a blush blooming scarlet across your cheeks.

  
It had only been once, for Christ’s sake…

  
The clock chimes 5; you’re out of your chair and in the elevator before you even register moving.

  
Your brain is in a fuzzy, rosy haze; blocking out the sounds of traffic and the swarm of bodies pressing in during your commute. The only center of your thoughts, the only thing that sticks out clearer than the pulse of your own heartbeat, is them.

  
You’re so close. You practically kick down your apartment door, not even bothering to lock it behind you or drop your keys. Instead you head straight for the kitchen.

  
And there they are, and there you are, standing in the doorway and realizing how very, very low you’ve sunk.

  
And knowing that they don’t care, and powerless to do anything about it.

  
As you collapse into your dining room chair, knees weak from relief and anticipation, they stare back at you. Steam billows from their face, which is as smooth and placid as a lake made emerald.

  
So, so beautiful.

  
Your hands wrap around the cup; feeling its contours, feeling its warmth bleed through your fingers. You tip your head back and let yourself take a long, slow, aching draw of Green.

  
They splash down your throat, their warm stickiness pouring through your veins, making them light afire, thousands of suns burning throughout your body from the very first taste.

  
Your legs splay open; you slump back in your chair, spine arching as the rest of you goes boneless.

  
Finally.

  
Your eyes slip close, the cup precariously held in weak, trembling fingers as the aftershocks roll through you.


	2. Decode - Paramore

Twice now, you’ve given in.

  
Twice.

  
You’ve never lost control for anyone or anything before, not like this. Your parents raised you better than to be some desperate, wanton waste of a girl, barely capable of maintaining coherence without your next fix.

  
You. Are. Better than this.

  
And that’s why, after your brain recovers from its foggy, tea-induced euphoria, you decide that it’s over.

  
You’re done with Green.

  
_Done._

  
Rising from your chair on legs too flimsy to hold your weight, you pour what’s left of them down the sink. And you absolutely do not whimper as you see them spin ‘round the drain.

  
You’re stronger than this.

  
You have to be.  
…………  
It’s 5 hours before your hands start to shake.

  
12 hours and a night of fitful sleep before some dark, warm, aching hunger lodges in a forbidden place beneath your stomach.

  
You snap at your coworkers without meaning to, their voices too loud, too much. Every tap on the shoulder or elbow brushed in passing down the hallway has you jumping out of your sweat-slicked skin. Your resolve has been crumbling since your eyes opened this morning.

  
But you’re going to try. Goddammit, you’re going to try, going to pretend that things like dignity and self-respect and and and - anything other than Green is worth the unrelenting waves of want shuddering through your body right now.

  
It’s a miracle that you manage to get through the day. And when you finally slump your way into your commute, desire is slowly overcome with white-hot anger. How dare Green do this to you? Who gave them the right to reduce you to shambles?

  
How can you move on from this? As you unlock your apartment door, the weight of all that’s changed presses down on your back.

  
You want your life back. You want _yourself_ back.

  
And you ignore Green. It takes everything you have, but you ignore them.

  
You sleep in your clothes that night. When you wake up, your pillow is damp.

  
You cry no less than three times while at work. From desire to anger to vague depression in 2 days. A new record, even for pathetic little you.

  
And you know you’ll give in before you’ve even clocked out.

  
You simply can’t take it anymore.

  
And when Green finally touches your lips again, and you know you’ve sunk beyond reach - it’s okay.

It’s worth it.

  
And even if it wasn’t, you’re in too deep to keep up the fight.


	3. Tell Me Where It Hurts - Halestorm

It’s amazing, really, how good it feels to give in.

You do not so much live through the next few days as float through them. Work passes by with barely a conscious thought; your body is present as ever but your mind is not, always returning to thoughts of your home, to your kitchen, to Green. You are thoroughly enraptured and you can’t find it in yourself to care.

Those long, endless twilight hours that you spend with Green, that end sooner than you can bear, are the only things worth noting. Every minute that you’re within your apartment, they are with you, whether that be in your kitchen or your bed. It’s always one of the two and they are quickly becoming your favorite places to exist, to breathe, to _be_ because of Green.

The small, trembling voice buried deep in your head is still awake enough to whisper: you cannot live in this place anymore, if Green leaves you. You won’t be able to lie in your own bed - won’t be able to bear it. Green will break you, if you give them enough time.

But it’s easy enough to ignore that voice when you’re drinking Green. Chugging back cupful after cupful of their full-bodied essence. Letting them revitalize your very _soul_.

There is a meeting at work that week; Jenny offers you a steaming black mug of Oolong and you almost slap it out of her hand, your body doing a full-on recoil in horror. As if you could even think about drinking another tea! As if you could _dare_!

You hold your cup close to your chest that night, and sleep with it long after it’s emptied.


	4. Innocence - Halestorm

Your relationship with Green only increases in intensity. You go from drinking them once a day after work to at least three cups before dinner.

You throw back cups of Green like most people throw back vodka.

There’s a lightness to your step that, as far as you can recall, there’s never been.

 _Is this what it’s like to do drugs?_ you wonder, when you’ve zoned out of a conversation for the umpteenth time that day.

And that thought gives you a jolt - the first brief, burning awareness to hit you in a long time.

Green is… no. Green is not a drug. Not literally. They’re just… they’re your _everything_ , now. You’re very much aware of how bad that sounds, but helpless to do much about it. And helplessness is something you become deeply familiar with once the month ends.

On what is otherwise a perfectly normal day, an odd tingle starts at the bottom of your spine. You ignore it for most of the day, assuming you might have just slept awkwardly.

It’s not until you get home to Green that you realize why.

You take all of one sip and that tingle you’ve been feeling erupts. Oh God. Oh, dear Lord. You rub your legs together, frantic to soothe the heat now pulsing through your core. This is the first time you’ve ever drank Green while on your period. And while you had a rough understanding of how caffeine affected your hormones from beverages prior, none had ever hit you this hard.

There’s something decidedly filthy about your choice to keep drinking. Something inside of you feels filled; blood and arousal soak through your pants, leaving a stain that’ll be hell to clean out later.

It is, without a doubt, the best drink you’ve ever had.


	5. The Silence - Halestorm

Three months.

  
You get three blissful, glorious months. In hindsight, that was more than you dared to ask for. To be with Green that long, when you were so certain that the two of you would crash and burn - well, wasn’t that something like a miracle?

  
Wasn’t that _enough_?

  
You still can’t give a straight answer, even now. The wounds - the thirst - are still fresh, after all this time.

  
But you can remember how it ended, now, and not be engulfed by sorrow.  
………

  
You’re clipping coupons out of the newspaper when you find out. The supermarket touts a whopping 10 boxes of Green for just 3 dollars - the lowest bargain that they’ve ever had. You’re just about to cheer for this small blessing when you skim the rest of the ad.

  
“Last in Stock - Herbal Essentials Going Our of Business” is plastered in fat red letters under the price.

  
And you scream. It’s a wounded, feral sound that comes from the deepest part of your very _soul_. You run into the kitchen, where Green sits in their cup. Their impassive face stares back at your tear-streaked one.

  
And you realize that they knew. They knew the tea manufacturer was going out of business, and they let you get attached - let you fall this _hard_ \- anyway.

  
You should hate them. A part of you does, but it’s drowned out by the sheer terror of losing them. You slump into your chair, hold Green in your hands.

  
“I can’t do this,” you whimper. And you know you mean it and they know you mean it - they know, they know, and you wish that was enough but it never will be.

  
You’ve wanted them for so long, longer than you’ve ever wanted anyone. And it hurts. God, it hurts.

  
You sob; big, fat teardrops _plink_ into the cup, tainting it with your salt. You cannot stop the heaving gasps that wrack your chest and your hands shake, sloshing the only one you’ve ever cared about onto the table. Puddles form on the well-worn wood, puddles that glint in the light like something pale and more precious than any gold. You cry harder.

  
You sleep in the kitchen that night, head resting beside the cup, lips just barely brushing the saucer as you snore. Your cheek sticks to the table.

  
You skip work that day. The thought of leaving Green behind when there’s so little of them left is simply too much. You scrounge up what little food can be found in your cabinets and otherwise stay under a mound of blankets. The grieving process has begun.

  
It’s a month before Green’s manufacturer shuts down completely. You find what you can, scouring eBay and the few indie tea shops in town to eek out as many boxes as possible.

  
But there’s only so much you can do.

  
You have to keep functioning. Keep living, even as your time with Green tick tick ticks away in the background. You know the number of tea bags left by heart, you cut back to one cup a day - every method to stretch this out longer, you try.

  
But then it’s here. The final cup.

  
You are in your kitchen - where this all started. It’s drizzling rain outside, the diffused sunlight making Green glow gold. The cup warms your hands.

  
This time, you take it slow.

  
You don’t start to cry until you’re halfway to the bottom.

  
And when it’s over - when the last sip of Green you’ll ever have has finally passed your lips - you are still crying.

  
But you are not empty.


End file.
